Memoirs and morsels from home and abroad

sticky fingers

Tonight was girls’ night out. Our plan was a few bottles of wine, good food, and a chick flick. Courtney, our camp counselor for the evening, and I had attended KH Krena‘s art exhibit at the Alliance Francaise (aka the French Library) earlier in the week. When she inquired whether there might exist an analogous Italian Library in Boston, and she mentioned that she lives in the North End, I offered to make biscotti for our girly evening.

Granted, I did warn her that the last time I made biscotti was for a Thanksgiving dinner when someone sat down next to me and whispered, “Don’t eat the cookies, they’re hard as a rock.” Heathen!

It has been a few years since I’ve baked biscotti, so it took me about an hour to unearth the right recipe. I recalled I used to make one almond version, and one chocolate hazelnut version. But which recipe was the right one? I would have to go by touch. Literally. I skimmed through some likely cookbook culprits, narrowed down my options based on ingredients and then felt my way through the pages to find one correct recipe. Bingo — Biscotti di Prato — dogeared and Post-it® flagged like many others, but most importantly, covered in a bas relief of my sticky biscotti dough fingerprints.

When I made the biscotti this morning, I remembered the immense stickiness of the biscotti dough and how I used to liberally flour my hands when shaping the logs for the first baking. I like the little bit of excess flour all over the logs, reminding everyone that the biscotti are homemade and very authentic.

Tuscan almond biscotti

Adapted from Lou Seibert Pappas’ Biscotti (recipe for Biscotto di Prato) and Nick Malgieri’s Cookies Unlimited(recipe for Cantuccini – classic Tuscan biscotti). Both recipes mention that these are meant to be dunked into sweet wine or coffee and are a bit crispier than most Americans are used to (take that, “‘hard as a rock'”). I attribute this crispness to the lack of shortning; these are on the lowish fat side, though they are still quite caloric. I used the Pappas proportions and toasting of the almonds, and the Maglieri cinnamon addition. The cinnamon flavor is not very strong — it just gives a hint of extra “flavor texture” if there is such a thing. Or is this complexity?

Makes approximately 3 dozen

3/4 C sliced blanched almonds

3 eggs

1 t vanilla

2 C unbleached or all-purpose flour

7/8 C sugar

1/2 t cinnamon

1 t baking soda

dash salt

Preheat oven to 350°F

Toast nuts: place nuts on baking sheet in preheated oven for 6-8 minutes, checking frequently, until golden brown. Do not allow nuts to burn. Let cool.

Turn oven down to 300°F

In large bowl, combine dry ingredients. Make deep well in center and beat eggs with vanilla, then gradually incorporate dry ingredients into wet until well blended.

Add cooled almonds and mix in.

First baking: Line cookie sheet with parchment paper. If you don’t have parchment paper, liberally grease and flour cookie sheets. Flour your hands, divide dough in half and pat dough into 2 logs about 1/2 inch thick, 1 1/2 inch wide, and 12 inches long. Make sure to space the logs at least 2 inches apart. Bake in middle of oven at 300°F for 50 minutes until golden brown.

Transfer from baking sheet to a rack and let cool for 5 minutes. NOTE: this is different from most other biscotti recipes that call for a full cooling after the first baking. With a serrated knife, slice logs diagonally into 1/2 inch slices.

Lower oven to 275ºF

Lay slices flat on cookie sheets (I usually find that I need 2 cookie sheets by this point) and return to 275ºF oven for 20-25 minutes, turning over once. Cool on rack.

Great biscotti! Glad the distraction of packing 10 girls into a one tiny kitchen made the biscotti somewhat tough to locate…leaving more for me the next day! I broke my ‘no sugar’ ban two days in a row for it.

Even in your small kitchen, you did a great job entertaining, Court! I loved the fleur-de-lys theme. I can’t wait to try your recipes for biscotti, especially the one from your Sicilian family cookbook!

We LOVE Biscotti at our house. We tend to make them with 1 1/2 cups of almonds so that they’re just barely cookies and almost a nut confection.

It’s the Baking Soda that makes them crisp… though I’m surprised your recipe calls for all soda… I use 1 1/2 tsp powder and 1/2 tsp soda. Given the low acid content of the dough, I bet most of the soda doesn’t leaven but just makes the cookies a little salty, which brings out the flavor of the nuts.

To make them more italian, I leave off the cinnamon and vanilla and add 2 TBS of anisette (Pernod) which gives them a subtle anise/herbal flavor.

Thanks for the suggestions and chemistry explanations — you might appreciate my recent short post on molecular gastronomy (not a lesson, just a commentary: “food innovation: Ferran Adria, PhD?”) and an earlier one on how I consider baking to be chemistry and how I am NOT a chemist (“labo(u)r of love”). This recipe does tend to be a bit light on almonds and I’ve sometimes made it with whole almonds and also with a lot more as you mention. I was probably making biscotti often in the low-fat, pre-Atkins (but sugar is OK) days! Remember those days? Next time I’ll try with baking powder because I did notice that there was very little rising and spreading. As for the anise flavor — I just don’t like it, authentic or not. Though, I recently bought some Absente and I seem to be OK with that (but maybe it’s because after a few sips, everything seems pretty ok…).

Thanks water skater for visiting and commenting. The Union Square Care Cookbook was one of the first “celebrity” cookbook that I ever bought (and I have now bought many many more)…Since I personally am not a fan of anise, I may not ever be able to make super authentic biscotti. I do like the whole and sliced almonds and have seen a bunch of recipes for cornmeal. I also noticed from the picture in the cookbook that they seem to cut theirs really thin which seems like a nice and different touch. Ahhh….so many biscotti variations to try!

Thank you for visiting my site, Krena! It was such a beautiful exhibit — the art, the love, the passion, and of course, Paris! I really enjoyed the evening and it is always so wonderful to meet talented artists. I would be honored to be added to your valentine list!

About

Hi! I'm Gayle, and here I use my Hebrew name Zahavah. I work front of house in a restaurant where I'm learning the hospitality industry from the ground up. Up until a year ago, I was a health care consultant. Also, I have an MD. Go figure! Thanks for dropping by and joining the conversation.

koshercamembert@gmail.com

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